Library Highlights: International Law

Fundamental Perspectives on

International Law

William R. Slomanson

KZ 3180 .S59 F86 2011

From the Publisher: In a fairly succinct treatment, FUNDAMENTAL PERSPECTIVES ON INTERNATIONAL LAW provides a unique mix of cases, articles, documents, text, charts, tables, and questions. The key concepts of international law are introduced through thoroughly up-to-date content. Important cases are continually updated on the author’s website. The text is complemented by numerous review problems.

Decoding International Law: Semiotics and the Humanities

Susan Tiefenbrun

K213  .T53 2010

From the Publisher: Violations of international law and human rights laws are the plague of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. People’s inhumanity to people escalates as wars proliferate and respect for human rights and the laws of war diminish. In Decoding International Law: Semiotics and the Humanities , Professor Susan Tiefenbrun analyzes international law as represented artfully in the humanities. Mass violence and flagrant violations of human rights have a dramatic effect that naturally appeals to writers, film makers, artists, philosophers, historians, and legal scholars who represent these horrors indirectly through various media and in coded language. This reader-friendly book enables us to comprehend and decode international law and human rights laws by interpreting meanings concealed in great works of art, literature, film and the humanities. Here, the author adopts an interdisciplinary method of interpretation based on the science of signs, linguistics, stylistics, and an in-depth analysis of the work’s cultural context. This book unravels the complexities of such controversial issues as terrorism, civil disobedience, women’s and children’s human rights, and the piracy of intellectual property. It provides in-depth analyses of diverse literary works: Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent and the movie Hotel Rwanda (both representing terrorism); Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail ; two documentary films about women and family law in Iran, Divorce Iranian Style and Two Women ; Lisa See’s Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (women’s human rights and human trafficking in China); Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation (shedding light on child soldiering and trafficking in Africa), and much more.

Law Among Nations: An Introduction to Public International Law

Gerhard von Glahn, James Larry Taulbee

KZ 3185 .V66 2010

From the Publisher: Offering a more accessible alternative to casebooks and historical commentaries, Law Among Nations explains issues of international law by tracing the field’s development and stressing key principles and processes. This comprehensive text eliminates the need for multiple books by combining discussions of theory and state practice with excerpts from landmark cases. Renowned for its rigorous approach and clear explanations, Law Among Nations remains the gold standard for undergraduate introductions to international law.

International Law for International Relations

edited by Basak Çali

KZ 3410 .I5794 2010

From the Publisher: Due to the increasingly global nature of contemporary politics, it is necessary for students to have a solid grasp of international law. International Law for International Relations provides comprehensive coverage of the different ways to approach the study of international law. Drawing upon the work of internationally renowned academics and practitioners, this cutting-edge anthology identifies key issues within the field. Marked by its lucid presentation of the complexities of international law, this reader is ideal for students who have not who have not previously studied law. It is also suitable for graduate students who are tackling international law for the first time.

Fault Lines of International Legitimacy

edited by Hilary Charlesworth, Jean-Marc Coicaud

KZ 3410 .F38 2010

From the Publisher: Fault Lines of International Legitimacy addresses the following questions: What are the features and functions of legitimacy in the international realm? How does international legitimacy – as exemplified in particular by multilateral norms, organizations, and policies – change over time? What role does the international distribution of power and its evolution have in the establishment and transformation of legitimacy paradigms? To what extent do democratic values account for the growing importance of legitimacy and the increasing difficulty of achieving it at the international and national levels? One of the central messages of the book is that although the search for international legitimacy is an elusive endeavor, there is no alternative to it if we want to respond to the intertwined demands of justice and security and make them an integral and strategic part of international relations.

An Introduction to the Law of the United Nations

Robert Kolb

KZ 4986 .K65 2010

From the Publisher: This work aims to fill a gap in the existing legal literature by presenting a compact, concise but nevertheless panoramic view of the law of the United Nations. Today the organization is at the centre of all multilateral international relations and impossible to avoid. And of course the UN Charter is a foundational document without which modern international law cannot be properly understood. In spite of its importance, this pre-eminent world political organization is poorly understood by the general public, and the extent and variety of its activities is not widely appreciated. Even lawyers generally possess insufficient knowledge of the way its legal institutions operate. Assessments of the organization and judgments about its achievements are consequently frequently distorted. This work is aimed especially at remedying these deficiencies in public and legal understanding, but also at presenting the organization as a coherent system of values and integrated action. Thus the book presents an overarching view of the significance of the UN organization in general, the history of its origins in the League of Nations, the aims and principles of the Charter, governmental agencies, members of the Organization, the non-use of violence and collective security, the peaceful settlement of disputes, and the question of amendments to the Charter. This work will be suitable for students of law and international relations, as well as scholars and those interested in the work and organization of the United Nations.

The Perils of Social Media

Social Networking media like Facebook and Twitter can be fun and useful tools, but the pitfalls aren’t always obvious– particularly if you’re a lawyer.

If, as a lawyer, you discuss your wild weekend on Facebook, don’t ask the judge for a continuance because your father died. Your judge may be more tech-savvy than you think.

Judges need to be careful, too: When a Judge “friends” one of the lawyers in a child custody trial, he is disqualified from the case. A Public Reprimand is published by the Judicial Standards Commission on this matter. In Florida, judges and lawyers can’t be Facebook friends.

Be aware of the issue of Legal Ethics and Facebook – recently discussed by the Philadelphia Bar Association.

12 Social Media Ethics Issues for Lawyers

Library Display: Law & Environmental Disasters

As the Gulf Oil Disaster continues to capture the headlines we are reminded that the law, and court interpretation of the law, ultimately arbitrates the scope of each disaster and defines the economic, legislative, and regulatory consequences that follow.

Drop by the Library and look over our timely display of books and videos highlighting just some of our collection’s significant holdings on this topic.

Library Highlights: Taxation

From Sword to Shield: The Transformation of the Corporate Income Tax, 1861 to Present

Steven A. Bank

KF6464 .B36 2010

From the Publisher: The U.S. corporate income tax – and in particular the double taxation of corporate income – has long been one of the most criticized and stubbornly persistent aspects of the federal revenue system. Unlike in most other industrialized countries, corporate income is taxed twice, first at the entity level and again at the shareholder level when distributed as a dividend. The conventional wisdom has been that this double taxation was part of the system’s original design over a century ago and has survived despite withering opposition from business interests. In both cases, history tells another tale. Double taxation as we know it today did not appear until several decades after the corporate income tax was first adopted. Moreover, it was embraced by corporate representatives at the outset and in subsequent years businesses have been far more ambivalent about its existence than is popularly assumed.  From Sword to Shield: The Transformation of the Corporate Income Tax, 1861 to Present is the first historical account of the evolution of the corporate income tax in America. Professor Steven A. Bank explains the origins of corporate income tax and the political, economic, and social forces that transformed it from a sword against evasion of the individual income tax to a shield against government and shareholder interference with the management of corporate funds.

Decoding the U.S. Corporate Tax Related and Supplementary Consumer Law

Daniel N. Shaviro

KF6455 .S53 2009

From the Publisher: “The corporate tax could soon be headed in new directions,” Dan Shaviro writes in Decoding the U.S. Corporate Tax, wherein he assesses the threats to America’s corporate tax code and challenges conventional wisdom on the best avenues for reform. Shaviro dissects the vagaries of the law, lays out the fundamental policy issues, and considers the road ahead. As rising globalization, capital mobility, financial innovation, and political polarization combine to destabilize tax policy and government revenue, Shaviro maps the path to fair, revenue-generating reform.

Corporate Income Taxation

Douglas A. Kahn

KF6464 .K28 2009

From the Publisher: This book provides a comprehensive overview of federal corporate income taxation valuable both for the generalist who has minimal contact with the subject and the specialist who is immersed in the topic. It is also a useful resource for law students taking a course in this area. It can serve as a course book that provides an introduction to the subject, as well as a resource for problems that the teacher can readily customize from examples in the book.

Corporate Taxation: Examples & Explanations

Cheryl D. Block

KF6465 .B557 2010

From the Publisher: Examples & Explanations: Corporate Taxation offers a remarkably clear treatment of a complex area of tax law. Demystifying Subchapter C, Cheryl D. Block methodically explains all of the tax issues that arise from the formation of the corporation to liquidation. Students learn by applying the concepts in multiple problem sets and comparing their answers to Block’s thorough analysis. Making complicated tax laws understandable, this straightforward introduction to the principles of corporate taxation offers: logical cradle-to-grave organization—modified by considering corporate liquidations prior to the more complex materials on tax-free reorganizations. numerous diagrams that illustrate the complexities and relational aspects of corporate transactions, practical skill development that will enable students to identify the details that really matter in the larger context, examples and explanations that test students’ understanding and provide an opportunity to apply what they have learned in each chapter and a modular chapter structure that easily adapts to different teaching approaches.

Global E-Business Law & Taxation

editor in chief, Ana D. Penn

K1005 .G56 2009

From the Publisher: As electronic commerce has taken off around the world, countries have struggled to participate in the boom without sacrificing key tax revenue. In recent years, there has been a worldwide explosion in the regulation of e-business, particularly in the area of taxation. Global E-Business Law and Taxation offers expert insight and guidance for practitioners who are involved in e-business transactions. The contributors of this publication, local tax practitioners with in-depth knowledge of their respective jurisdictions, share expert commentary and analysis with the reader. Global E-Business Law and Taxation compares and contracts e-business tax laws and regulations in North America; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; Latin America; Asia; Australia; and select offshore jurisdictions. Each of the regional sections includes an analysis of e-business taxation developments in major countries within the region.

Comparative Income Taxation: A Structural Analysis

Hugh J. Ault and Brian J. Arnold

K4505.4 .A95 2010

From the Publisher: The purpose of this book is to compare different solutions adopted by nine industrialized countries to common problems of income tax design. As in other legal domains, comparative study of income taxation can provide fresh perspectives from which to examine a particular national system. Increasing economic globalization also makes understanding foreign tax systems relevant to a growing set of transnational business transactions. Comparative study is, however, notoriously difficult. Full understanding of a foreign tax system may require mastery not only of a foreign language, but also of foreign business and legal cultures. It would be the work of a lifetime for a single individual to achieve that level of understanding of the nine income taxes compared in this volume. Suppose, however, that an international group of tax law professors, each expert in his own national system, were asked to describe how that system resolved specific problems of income tax design with respect to individuals, business organizations, and international transactions. Suppose further that the leaders of the group wove the resulting answers into a single continuous exposition, which was then reviewed and critiqued by a wider group of tax teachers. The resulting text would provide a convenient an comprehensive introduction to foreign approaches to income taxation for teachers, students, policy-makers and practitioners.